Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Does he think Iran is Iowa?

For those who don't recognize the picture, it's Iranian Neda Agha Soltan shortly after being shot by Iranian thugs in the streets of Tehran in June 2009. The suppression of the Iranian revolution in 2009 (the two opposition candidates remain under house arrest six years later) is one reason why Leon Wieseltier is critical of President Hussein Obama's insistence on forgetting history (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).

This is nothing other than the mentality of disruption applied to
foreign policy. In the realm of technology, innovation justifies itself;
but in the realm of diplomacy and security, innovation must be
justified, and it cannot be justified merely by an appetite for change.
Tedium does not count against a principled alliance or a grand strategy.
Indeed, a continuity of policy may in some cases—the Korean peninsula,
for example: a rut if ever there was one—represent a significant
achievement. But for the president, it appears, the tradition of all the
dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.
Certainly it did in the case of Cuba, where the feeling that it was time
to move on (that great euphemism for American impatience and
inconstancy) eclipsed any scruple about political liberty as a condition
for movement; and it did with Iran, where, as Rhodes admits, the
president was tired of things staying the same, and was enduring history
as a rut. And in the 21st century, when all human affairs are to begin
again!

Obama’s restlessness about American policy toward Iran was apparent
long before the question of Iran’s nuclear capability focused the mind
of the world. In his first inaugural address,
he famously offered an extended hand in exchange for an unclenched
fist. Obama seems to believe that the United States owes Iran some sort
of expiation. As he explained
to Thomas Friedman the day after the nuclear agreement was reached, “we
had some involvement with overthrowing a democratically elected regime
in Iran” in 1953. Six years ago, when the streets of Iran exploded in a
democratic rebellion and the White House stood by as it was put down by
the government with savage force against ordinary citizens, memories of
Mohammad Mosaddegh were in the air around the administration, as if to
explain that the United States was morally disqualified by a prior sin
of intervention from intervening in any way in support of the
dissidents. The guilt of 1953 trumped the duty of 2009. The Iranian
fist, in the event, stayed clenched. Or to put it in Rhodes-spin, our
Iran policy remained in a rut.

But it is important to recognize that
the rut—or the persistence of the adversarial relationship between Iran
and the United States—was not a blind fate, or an accident of
historical inertia, or a failure of diplomatic imagination. It was a
choice. On the Iranian side, the choice was based upon a worldview that
was founded in large measure on a fiery, theological anti-Americanism,
an officially sanctioned and officially disseminated view of Americanism
as satanism. On the American side, the choice was based upon an
opposition to the tyranny and the terror that the Islamic Republic
represented and proliferated. It is true that in the years prior to the
Khomeini revolution the United States tolerated vicious abuses of human
rights in Iran; but then our enmity toward the ayatollahs’ autocracy may
be regarded as a moral correction. (A correction is an admirable kind
of hypocrisy.) The adversarial relationship between America and the
regime in Tehran has been based on the fact that we are proper
adversaries. We should be adversaries. What democrat, what pluralist, what liberal, what conservative, what believer, what non-believer, would want this Iran for a friend?

When one speaks about an unfree country, one may refer either to its
people or to its regime. One cannot refer at once to both, because they
are not on the same side. Obama likes to think, when he speaks of Iran,
that he speaks of its people, but in practice he has extended his hand
to its regime. With his talk about reintegrating Iran into the
international community, about the Islamic Republic becoming
“a very successful regional power” and so on, he has legitimated a
regime that was more and more lacking in legitimacy. (There was
something grotesque about the chumminess, the jolly camaraderie, of the
American negotiators and the Iranian negotiators. Why is Mohammad Javad
Zarif laughing?) The text of the agreement states
that the signatories will submit a resolution to the UN Security
Council “expressing its desire to build a new relationship with Iran.”
Not a relationship with a new Iran, but a new relationship with this
Iran, as it is presently—that is to say, theocratically, oppressively,
xenophobically, aggressively, anti-Semitically, misogynistically,
homophobically—constituted. When the president speaks about the people
of Iran, he reveals a bizarre refusal to recognize the character of life
in a dictatorship. In his recent Nowruz message,
for example, he exhorted the “people of Iran … to speak up for the
future [they] seek.” To speak up! Does he think Iran is Iowa? The last
time the people of Iran spoke up to their government, they left their
blood on the streets. “Whether the Iranian people have sufficient
influence to shift how their leaders think about these issues,” Obama
told Friedman, “time will tell.” There he is again, the most powerful
man in the world, backing off and bearing witness.

If
I could believe that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action marked the
end of Iran’s quest for a nuclear weapon—that it is, in the president’s
unambiguous declaration, “the most definitive path by which Iran will
not get a nuclear weapon” because “every pathway to a nuclear weapon is
cut off”—I would support it. I do not support it because it is none of
those things. It is only a deferral and a delay. Every pathway is not
cut off, not at all. The accord provides for a respite of 15 years, but
15 years is just a young person’s idea of a long time. Time, to borrow
the president’s words, will tell. Even though the text of the agreement
twice states that “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran
ever seek, develop, or acquire any nuclear weapons,” there is no
evidence that the Iranian regime has made a strategic decision to turn
away from the possibility of the militarization of nuclear power. Its
strategic objective has been, rather, to escape the sanctions and their
economic and social severities. In this, it has succeeded. If even a
fraction of the returned revenues are allocated to Iran’s vile
adventures beyond its borders, the United States will have subsidized an
expansion of its own nightmares.

I don't believe that Obama is so stupid as to decide to ignore history entirely. I think he wanted change - a different policy - that aligned the United States with rogue regimes like Iran and Cuba. Those are the people with whom he feels most comfortable. Another reminder.

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I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com